Chinatown, Boston

Chinatown is a neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts, located in the city's downtown area. In 1870, the first Chinese residents were brought from San Francisco to break the North Adams strike, and many of the immigrants moved to the Boston area in 1874. In 1875, as laundries were becoming more popular, the Chinese also opened restaurants. In the 1800s and 1900s, many Chinese immigrants came to Boston looking for work and opportunity, but Chinese immigrant was halted by a federal act in 1882. In 1903, an immigration raid led to the arrest of 234 people and the deportation of 45 of them. However, the abolition of the exclusion act in 1943 led to continued Chinese immigration in the 1950s. The construction of the Massachusetts Turnpike during the 1960s took away much of the land in Chinatown that had been used for businesses, and the garment district vanished in the 1990s due to the rising cost of rent, property sales, and the removal of homeowners. The demise of the Chinatowns in Providence and Portland left Boston's Chinatown as the last ethnic Chinese enclave in New England, and it had an abundance of Chinese and Vietnamese restaurants.